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1893 to be the next year of the failure of the Chicago Fire Department?
As Ransom’s cab neared, all about the street, people ran shouting and pointing and trying to steer clear of the hooves of racing horses pulling the latest in fire fighting equipment—which remained inadequate to the task. Antiquated equipment, too little, too late. The images and sights and sounds of the fire numbered so many, no one could see or hear them alclass="underline" multiple fire wagons descending on the scene from three directions. Firemen appeared in chaos, hauling out axes, picks, hoses, buckets. Some worked the hoses, others the ladders. It took some to quell the terrified horses that’d supposedly been trained for fire emergencies.
Ransom felt a stomach gnawing sense of a losing battle.
No lessons whatsoever learned since ’71 save those of graft and fraud and phony land speculation. When it’d come time for the displaced families of the Great Chicago Fire to collect on all those many “church” and benevolent society funds, there were no funds. They’d all been systematically disposed of by the shrewd promoters who’d thought up these fine-sounding benevolent “societies.” The funds had gone into the purchase of ash-strewn downtown lots on streets of loss, where nothing but a lone charred and blackened water tower and firehouse made of native limestone sat forlornly at the end of Michigan Avenue. A boon and a lure as it happened for those with deep pockets. Men with both vision and selfishness in mind, greed and glory all balled up in one idea of a phoenix rising from the ashes, making the Gem of the Prairie shine again. But tonight only one thing mattered to the firemen whose very skin was seared and scorched and blackened by the fire at hand. Save the block . . . lose the whole tavern and entire building, the outbuildings, possibly the building to the immediate right and left, but stop it here and with no more loss of life than might already have occurred. An entire heavy oak bureau drawer with mirror, and a four-poster bed, mattress and springs had fallen through 156
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with fire-blackened flooring. The cross beams held longer, but as more and more became compromised these heavy beams—forming the crisscross support that made up the second floor—tore away in groaning complaint; the insatiable flames had licked at this area for too long now.
To the untrained eye, it might appear the flames had begun on the bottom floor, but not so with Chief Harold Stratemeyer, whose experience told him just the opposite, and this belief was given more credence when all the upper stairways caved in from the center. And now after this small explosion of debris amid the flames, Stratemeyer could see the result after the smoke cleared a bit.
Ransom stood alongside Stratemeyer unbelieving. Sitting atop the charred bar . . . like a mockery of Alastair’s former love nest, the bedsprings and still burning mattress precari-ously balanced. This was art of the devil.
Harry Stratemeyer was acting as the new fire marshal—old Warrick having been found floating in the Chicago River’s north branch. Death by what was being called an accidental drowning helped along by alcohol, but there remained the curious part—no wallet or money in his pockets.
At any rate, Stratemeyer, who’d been Warrick’s second in command, ordered men to water down surrounding buildings, having long since given up on the clapboard two-story and its surrounding outhouses. Chicago firefighters had in fact evolved greatly since the devastating fire in 1871. While still in need of more and better equipment, they did have far better access to water, as sewers now carried needed supplies to hydrants throughout the network of streets. And their tanks were larger and their horses faster and generally—but not always—better trained on chaos. His men were also better trained and outfitted.
Strateymeyer grabbed Ransom the moment he saw the big inspector wandering in a daze toward the flames, pointing and shouting about someone he called Merielle. But it was no easy grab; Stratemeyer had had to subdue Ransom with the help of several of his men. Otherwise, Alastair would’ve CITY FOR RANSOM
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surely rushed into the flames—flames in their acme, rabid, licking, unstoppable.
Stratemeyer, a large man himself, had thrown a massive bear-hug onto Ransom, and with the two others, had wrestled his friend Alastair into a sitting position below the cinders that rained down around them all like searing fireflies discovering freedom.
Finally, two large firemen now sat on Ransom where he beat the earth with both fists.
Alastair Ransom had sat all night on the street corner, feeling his life going off into the night sky with the smoke that discolored the moon. Head in hands, eyes arched and watching, Alastair said a prayer for Merielle as the final boards caught flame, only to fall into the center of the gutted two-story. The place had housed the old London Royale Arms Tavern, a pretentious title for a pub, and his Merielle’s rooms above, now no longer above.
Stratemeyer would not let him set foot onto the scene until one hundred percent certain that first the fire was under control, and until he could determine if it were arson or an unfortunate accidental occurrence. Two burly firemen stood guard over Ransom where he sat while Harry kicked through the rubble in a methodical going over.
As it’d been a large, sprawling thing that went far back of the yards, a number of other apartments rented by the owner of the Arms had also burned. But everyone living in the building was accounted for, all but Polly Pete.
Now at daybreak, the fire under control, Ransom stood to shake off the weary firemen guarding him. He began a strange tiptoe amid the squalor and fumes and blackness of the gutted house, working to remain in Harry’s footsteps so as to disturb as little as possible of Stratemeyer’s possible arson investigation, and he thought of the last time he’d spoken to Merielle.
The second floor had caved in on the bar below, and all of 158
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Polly Pete’s frilly adornments had gone up in smoke, along with her trunk, her bureau drawer, the mirror blackened with smutty, grimy smoke now atop chairs and tables in one corner—somehow miraculously intact, a still-life painted in fire meant to mock Ransom, to rend his heart. Peering into her eerily intact mirror was a look into a bottomless abyss of smut. Nothing reflected from it save a single eye—his eye, reflecting where a single dewy quarter-sized square remained somehow unblemished. Satan winking at him. Then he saw the bed again— their bed—straddled atop what was left of the bar, the mattress gone save for the seared, hoary black tufts of it. Black spider webs clung to rails, to exposed conduits for the gas burners, pipes, leftover standing boards, leftover standing glasses half melted, to an array of exploded bottles of rye, rum, whiskey, gin, vodka and other spirits. Only the bedsprings remained of their bed, and the coiled springs, like the mirror, painted in satanic abandon.
“Where is she? If not here . . . where?” he asked. A glim-mer, like a fleeting bird from his deepest recesses of—hope for Merielle—rose in him.
A completely ash-covered Stratemeyer looked him in the eye. “Alastair, you should go home . . . go home, now.”
“Where the bloody hell is she?”
Stratemeyer gritted his teeth. “You’re a hard man to stay liking, Alastair. You should take a friend’s advice!”
He pushed past Harry, searching, tearing at boards, cutting hands on debris in his mad hunt for Merielle, but he found nothing when he came around a wall on his right side that’d somehow grotesquely remained standing, as a magician’s trick . . . like the trick of the intact mirror. Still, no body.